I feel that I am right in between. My children may have a certain time that we start school at, but if they need a break for an hour, then we can take a break! How about you guys? Are you laidback or scheduled?

I would guess that depends on how autonomously your children can study. If all of them are under grades 3-4 or so, and they're fairly self-motivated, then you don't need to oversee much and they can go off and study whenever it's convenient for them. If they need a bit of a push, or if you need to be there to answer questions or oversee experiments or whatever, then scheduling a study time is obviously going to be helpful. But either way, short breaks between subjects won't hurt - concentration starts to drop after 30 minutes to an hour depending on age and attention span, unless the subject/activity is one that your children really enjoy. Even if you have a rigid schedule, it should have breaks built into it.

Most of my friends think we're so structured it's scary, whereas my husband has been known to say I'm so relaxed my brains are falling out. I wanted to unschool, but my kids wanted structure, so structure it is. We have an order we start to follow each day, but there are few days we don't get away from it to some degree. I like to finish everything I plan each day for the first week or two of each term, and after that things kind of blow in the breeze.

I am extremely structured and feel I have to be. My kids are only 4 and 5 and we have already started a full time year-round school schedule. They have lots of breaks throughout the day to play, but we start mostly on time, take our breaks on time, and switch from one "class" to the next on time. When the weekends come, they enjoy the break from school, but by the end of Sunday they are excited to start another week of school again the next morning. Don't know how long this approach will work for, but for now, it's clicking.